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Colorado's prison guard overtime explodes by $9 million annually

By Christopher N. OsherThe Denver Post

Posted:
01/03/2014 04:01:25 PM MST

FILE -- The residence building at Fort Lyon in Las Animas, Colorado on Tuesday, November 19, 2013. In September, the former Correctional Facility was reopened as a rehabilitation center for the homeless. (Kent Nishimura, The Gazette)

Legislation that turned a shuttered prison in rural Fort Lyon into a facility to aid the state's homeless included provisions that have escalated overtime costs for Colorado's prison guards by $9 million annually, a legislative analysis has found.

Prior to passage of the legislation, the Corrections Department computed overtime for corrections officers using a 28-day work period.

The legislation, sponsored and pushed by leading Democratic legislators, ended up shortening those work periods to 14 days. It further required overtime pay when hours worked by a corrections officer exceeded 85 hours in a 14-day work period and when officers worked 12 or more hours in a 24-hour period.

"Since both of these provisions refer to payment for the overtime, the department concludes that the provisions eliminate the department's previous discretionary ability to pay cash for overtime or award compensatory time," states a recent analysis by Steve Allen, a staffer for the Joint Budget Committee.

Allen recommends a legislative fix be made to "eliminate some of the unintended overtime consequences of the bill, thus aligning costs more closely with the fiscal note."

The Joint Budget Committee, which forwards funding recommendations that the full legislature votes on, is scheduled to discuss the issue Monday.

Allen said in his analysis that he and the Department of Corrections drastically underestimated the impact the scheduling provisions in Senate Bill 210 would have on overtime costs.

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He estimated before the legislature approved the bill that it would increase monthly corrections officer overtime costs, which had been averaging $213,438, by $173,333. Instead, after the legislation went into effect in August, it exploded prison guard overtime to an average of $960,000 a month, Allen found.

The legislation was sponsored by State Rep. Crisanta Duran, a Democrat from Denver and the new chairwoman of the powerful Joint Budget Committee. Former State Sen. Angela Giron, a Democrat from Pueblo, who later lost a recall vote, sponsored the legislation in the Senate.

Giron could not be reached, but Duran said officials with the Colorado Department of Corrections had misinterpreted the legislation, which she said was never meant to increase overtime costs so dramatically.

"They've now got guidance and clarification as to the interpretation of the bill, and they will make necessary changes to make sure the bill is implemented the way it was intended," Duran said.

Officials with Colorado WINS, which represents state employees, did not comment extensively on the issue.

"It affects state employees, so we'll have some direction on it," said Hilary Chigro, an organizing director for Colorado WINS. "We wouldn't want workers going uncompensated for work they do."

Officials with the Colorado Department of Corrections declined comment, saying they wanted to appear before the Joint Budget Committee first before discussing the issue publicly.

The legislation that ended up increasing the overtime costs also turned a rural Fort Lyon prison facility, shuttered by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper amid budget cuts, into a repurposed facility intended to aid the state's homeless population.

In 2012, the Joint Budget Committee denied Hickenlooper's efforts to repurpose the facility for the homeless. News reports stated that Giron helped amend Senate Bill 210, which originally dealt with how correctional officer work hours are calculated, to include Hickenlooper's proposal for the Fort Lyon facility.

After intense political wrangling at the state Capitol, lawmakers passed the measure, which also appropriated funds to bus the state's homeless to the rural facility to receive substance-abuse support services, medical care and job training.